Motherhood
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Holding her newborn daughter, Meredith has some doubts, but thankfully Derek is there to lend a helping hand.


September 29th marked the four year anniversary of when the infamous Bailey's Interns had started working at Seattle Grace. In these four years, a lot has happened, but most importantly of all, relationships have been formed. Cristina and Burke were married, with a child of their own. Imagine the hospital's surprise when Cristina had gotten teary when her daughter's first words were "ma-ma". Alex and Izzie had reunited, with a one-year-old son who they'd named Jamie. And even Addison and Mark welcomed their daughter, Maria, a year ago, with the young girl already growing up to be just as beautiful as her mother.

Meredith sat on the hospital bed she'd been confined to, holding her own child in her arms. She wasn't used to being on the receiving end of medical treatment, but she was being allowed home with her newborn daughter after four days together in the hospital. She had to admit that she'd been feeling strange since the birth of her daughter. Even though she'd been looking forward to it immensely, she'd always imagined it to be different.

The tiny girl was only four-days-old, and Meredith had never felt as at a loss with herself as she did now. She found it strange to think that this was the child she had carried for eight and a half months, the child that was currently laying in her arms. She hadn't named the baby yet. She couldn't think of a name.

Most of the time, the baby looked stared back at the entranced woman who just couldn't take her eyes off of her. Occasionally, small hands, surgeon's hands, as Dr. Webber had blessed them, reached up and grasped a strand of the long, wavy hair that hung close to her, but Meredith didn't mind. It wasn't like the tiny hands were trying to remove that hair from her skull, it was more of an observation of it, curling it around her newborn fingers.

Meredith stared at the baby still, her head and her mind in two separate places, yet they were still focused on the baby. She was so lost in thought that she didn't hear the approaching footsteps.

"Hey."

Meredith looked up at the voice, her eyes leaving the face of her child for the first time in two hours, and sees Derek heading towards her. She gave him a small smile as he continued to head towards her. She was glad that she had him. Parenting would have over-consumed her to the point of helplessness four days ago had it not been for him. After all, Derek was the reason that both her and her child were safe. Without him, there was a high chance that one or both of them would have died in childbirth. Trust Meredith to decide to give birth in the middle of a suspected terrorist scare when there was no chance of getting to a hospital. Their daughter had almost been born whilst they were waiting for George at the airport.

"Hey." She replied quietly.

"How are my girls?" He asked brightly.

"Confused." Meredith said simply, as she turned her attention back to the baby.

Derek sat down beside her on the bed, their shoulders tight against each other, and he reached out to stroke his daughter's head. The baby looked at him, and he smiled as her attention was drawn back to Meredith's hair.

"Why are we confused?" He asked with a gentle frown of concern.

Meredith kept her eyes on the baby as before, not meeting his worry-filled eyes. "Because Baby keeps looking around to see what's causing all the noise. Alex and George walked past arguing a few minutes ago about a certain bet involving our child's sex." She told him.

"And why is Mommy confused?" Derek asked her.

"Mommy's confused because she doesn't know what to do." She revealed. Mother was still a new term to her, and one that she was having trouble adapting to.

"What do you mean?" He asked, still the ever-worried Derek that wanted to take away all her cares so that she could enjoy life again. Because of him, she could do that.

She bit her lip, trying not to cry as she admitted what she was most ashamed of. "I don't know how to be a Mom, Derek." She muttered.

He gave her a reassuring smile. "Sure you do, Izzie, Cristina and Bailey have been helping...not to mention Addison." He reminded her.

"Yeah, they've shown me how to change diapers and how to hold her properly, but..." She sighed heavily, tracing the side of the baby's face softly. "I don't know what else to do. Cristina's got that bond with Micah, and Izzie's got it with Jamie...I haven't."

"Of course you have." Derek disagreed.

She shook her head, the tears still sitting tight in her eyes, waiting for the perfect opportunity to slip down her cheeks. "Don't say that, Derek, 'cause I haven't." She said to him.

"Mer-" He started, but she cut him off.

"I look at her, and I see a baby." She said sadly.

"She is a baby, Mer." He said gently, stroking her hair and looking at her adoringly. "Our baby."

"I know." She nodded. "But I want to look at her like _you _do. I want to look at her and see my daughter."

With this, Derek realised what she was talking about. She was worried about not being a good mother. "Mer, sweetheart, these bonds, sometimes they take time." Meredith bit her lip again. "Izzie got hers straight away, I know, but Cristina didn't...a lot of mothers don't." He didn't want Meredith to feel that she was never going to bond with her baby.

"Cristina found her bond when they thought Micah might have meningitis." She looked at Derek, and he saw those unshed tears in her eyes. "Derek, I don't want something like that to happen to make me realise that I love my baby."

"Hey, come here." Derek said, and wrapped his arm around her shoulder before she could start crying. She leaned against him, his shoulder providing a resting place for her head, and the baby in her arms was now balanced between the two of them, looking up at her parents with deep interest, almost like she knew that they were talking about her.

"What do I do, Der?" Meredith asked helplessly. "I _want _to feel like a Mom."

Derek nodded, placing a kiss on her forehead. "You can try what I did to feel like a Dad." He suggested.

She nodded as well. "I'll try anything. I just want to feel like I should do. I want to feel happy, not confused."

"Is that why you can't decide on a name?" He asked her.

After a few seconds of consideration, she nodded again. "Kinda. I knew that the name would come to me as soon as I looked at her, and I saw it. It's strange, but I haven't seen it yet." She explained to him.

"That's okay." He assured her. "At least we won't be one of those couples who wait until their kid is twelve until they're named." He joked.

Not being able to resist it, she laughed softly. "No." She agreed. "Definitely not."

He saw her smile fade after a few seconds, and he looked down at the beautiful child they had created. "Mer, I want you to look at her." Meredith looked down, and on cue, the baby looked at her as well, their eyes locking. "I want you to remember everything you can about the nine months you were carrying her; how scared you were, how much you were worried in case something went wrong, how excited you were..."

She spoke to him, not taking her eyes off of the baby. "You helped me, though." She reminded him. "I would have panicked so much without you there."

"That doesn't mean that I'm going to disappear now." He reassured her. "I'm not going anywhere." He kissed the side of her head again. "Right, now do you remember the birth?"

She nodded. "Yeah. It hurt." She remembered.

"I know it did, and it hurt for a long time, didn't it?" She nodded with a sigh. She had been in labour for almost twelve hours, and had never felt a pain like it before in her life. "After all of that pain, when she came out, and you heard her crying for the first time, what did you do?" He asked her, even though he knew.

"I cried." She said softly.

"Why?"

"I don't know."

He nodded at her. "Yes, you do."

She looked at him for a moment, and the back at the baby. That was his way of helping her. He was making her realise what went through her head so that she would stop doubting herself. In all honesty, she could barely remember why she cried, because it was such a swell of emotion that she couldn't do anything except let it out.

"I guess...I was...happy." She realised quietly. "I was glad that she was okay, and that she wasn't hurt, and that nothing had gone wrong."

Derek smiled. "And then, when you held her in your arms for the first time, how did it feel?"

"It was really nice." She said, smiling softly down at the baby. "'Cause I'd wanted to hold her properly for a long time, but I couldn't."

Derek nodded. "For the past four days, the only time she hasn't been in your arms is when she's in my arms, and most of that time your asleep." He pointed out.

She shrugged. "I just don't want to let her out of my sight." She admitted. "I don't want anything to happen to her."

"Why not?"

"Because she's my little girl and I love her."

Meredith realised what she had just said, and smiled deeply. No wonder this had worked for Derek. When she started to imagine something horrible happening to their daughter, she couldn't help but panic so much that she thought she might die if something ever harmed her. Now, she could look at the little girl and see her as a daughter, and no just a baby.

She turned to Derek and smiled at him, her first genuine smile in days. "Thank you, Derek."

They kissed briefly, and then he looked her in the eye. "The first time that you held her, right after she was born, I made a promise." He told her. "I saw how happy you were, and I promised that nothing would ever take that away from us, and that nothing would come between us and our little girl."

She smiled, and kissed him again. "I love you."

"I love you, too." He smiled back.

Meredith returned her gaze to the baby again, and leaned down to place a kiss on her forehead. Pulling back after placing her lips against her daughters head, she looked at Derek with a grin. "I know her name." She said excitedly.

"Okay, the moment of truth, what is it?" Derek asked brightly, having waited for his daughter to have a name for days, yet every time that he suggested one to Meredith, she had insisted that she hadn't seen it yet.

"Sophie." She said with a satisfied smile. "Her name is Sophie."

Derek smiled. "I love it." He told her, and looked down at the baby. "What do you think of your new name, Sophie?" He said in that cute tone he reserved only for babies."

Sophie, happy to have the attention from her father, opened her mouth wide and then gave a gentle smile.

Meredith gasped. "She smiled!" She cried happily. "Derek! She's smiling!"

Derek laughed, not knowing that babies this young could smile, and rubbed his hand up the top of Meredith's arm. "Now do you feel like a Mom?" He asked her.

She nodded firmly. "The best Mom in the world."

**A/N: I hope you liked this. I just think it suited Meredith with her rambling :P**


End file.
